John 8:4 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters | Metropolitan Tabernacle

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John 8:4

Comments

Various things seem to prevent his arrest. Sometimes, it would appear, the Lord put fear into the hearts of those officers, sent to apprehend Him. Sometimes, just awe and amazement at the power of his teaching, but the Pharisees were frustrated out of mind; they couldn’t get any of the offices of the temple actually to apprehend Him. So, being unable to arrest Him, they now try to trap him and discredit him – discredit him in the eyes of the people who were listening to his teaching. They could therefore hardly believe their good fortune, when somebody produced an offender. Why, this is too good to be true: this is no longer a theoretical question, this is an actual case. And they dragged her unceremoniously into the Temple and bundled her before the Lord as he was teaching, and they demand to know the answer to this question.Well it is the inescapable trap. What is the Lord going to do? Whichever way he answers, they can frame charges against him. If he were to say, ‘Well, the law of Moses must be upheld’, then they could arrest him and put him before the Roman authorities for inciting the death sentence contrary to the Roman law, but of course he would not say that because his whole mission is to set mercy and forgiveness above judgement. What was very well known, throughout the land, was that he proclaimed the opportunity of forgiveness and mercy to all who repent. He was talking about repentance and remission of sins, constantly, But if he says, no, the law of Rome must be upheld, she must go free, then they can charge him with being a false Messiah who is not going to deliver them from Rome. In their minds, this is inescapable, and they are the highest scholars in the land. They have thought about this for years before Christ began his ministry and they can attack him with it.

Application

Mind you, it’s the same today, isn’t it? In our present society, those who are violently against Christians, and Christianity, they cannot arrest us – not here, at any rate. They cannot stone us – they cannot do these sorts of things, so what do they do? They constantly try to discredit us. There is a rash of programmes once again, on the television, some of them repeats from Christmas time, and thereabouts, ridiculous, unscholarly, and absurd programmes, which constantly trying to undermine the documents of the Bible. Constantly they are trying to show that these are forgeries or wrong, and there are others that contradict them. It is all such an unscholarly and ludicrous mess, but people who don’t know about these things will have all sorts of doubts put in their minds, and the Scriptures would be discredited – if they can’t arrest us and stone us they’ll do what they can to discredit the Lord and discredit the word of God.

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John 8:4 Commentary and Bible Study